Glass beads, probably milky white but possibly clear, with a lustrous bright pink synthetic coating. When held up to the light, the beads are ever so slightly translucent (but not very).

Hole size:

1mm (estimated).

Defects:

The coating on Czech pearls is fairly thin, and I don't know how durable it is. Also, inevitably a few pearls will be missing some coating around one of the holes (a common defect with Czech coated beads). Frequently there will be "tags" of excess coating around the holes that need to be removed (use cuticle nippers). A few pearls may also have some anomalies in the coating, such as bumps, indentations or a bit of dirt. Having said all that, however, these pearls seem to be more perfect than most.

How photographed:

At the window in natural daylight.

Comments:

The supplier told me that their Czech manufacturer of glass pearls went out of business, and these beads are from a new manufacturer. I'm not happy that a manufacturer went out of business, but the colors from the new manufacturer are very interesting. This color is very intense.

My blurb above about the defects was written for beads from the old manufacturer. These beads look like they may be more perfect than the old ones.

Note: As of January, 2017, these glass pearls still look similar to the picture, although they are not quite as "neon" bright as the picture indicates. In other words, the color is still very bright and rich. As I have said elsewhere on this site, I learned several years ago that synthetically coated beads can fade or change color with time. If a bead is still listed for sale individually, that means the color has changed much. Once the color changes a great deal from what the picture shows, I remove them from the site and put them in a "faded pearls" mix. The fact that you are reading this means that the beads haven't change much. These beads are six years old now; if they are fading, they are fading very slowly.